Canon EF 35mm f/2 IS USM review: A ‘fast’ wide-angle prime for the 21st Century

Canon EF 35mm f/2 IS USM: a sharp and bright wide angle

A DxOMark Overall Score of 29 the Canon EF 35mm f/2 IS USM currently ranks as the 4th best lens tested on the Canon EOS 5D MKII.

With an Overall DxOMark Score of 29 tested on the Canon EOS 5D MKII the Canon EF 35mm F/2 IS USM ranks 4th overall just behind the Sigma 85mm f/1.4 EX DG HSM, Canon EF 100mm f/2 USM and another wide-angle option the $899 Sigma 35mm f/1.4 DG HSM A. With a Lens Metric Score for Sharpness of 17P-Mpix tested on the Canon 5D MKII the Canon EF 35mm f/2 IS USM offers an improvement in Sharpness over current wide-angle offerings such as the Zeiss Distagon T 35mm f/2 ZE Canon, with 15P-Mpix, or the Samyang 35mm F1.4 AS UMC Canon with just 12P-Mpix. That said edge sharpness isn’t perfect with some drop off at the wider aperture settings and slight barrel distortion is evident, too. A Lens Metric Score of -1.8Ev for vignetting indicates lens shading is also very strong at the maximum f/2 aperture but generally this is a bright lens as its Transmission Score of 2TSTop indicates.

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Comments

price drop 550$

I really hope Nikon makes something like this.

VR/IS is nice, but it seems like at the wide angle it's not as effective on Nikon's system because all the lenses that go wide with VR are slow (f/3.5 or f/4). I'd be very happy if they replaced the 35mm f/2D with something like this.

First replies for this comment

Re: I really hope Nikon makes something like this.

Quote:

<div id="linkdxomark">This a comment for <a href="http://www.dxomark.com/index.php/Lenses/Camera-Lens-Database/Canon/Canon-EF-35mm-F2-IS-USM">this page on the website</a></div>VR/IS is nice, but it seems like at the wide angle it's not as effective on Nikon's system because all the lenses that go wide with VR are slow (f/3.5 or f/4). I'd be very happy if they replaced the 35mm f/2D with something like this.